Reborn in hell with a skill creation system

Chapter 7: Chapter 7: A Farm

"The hell?"

Mael let out, not because of the thousands of massive demons below him right now, but because of the cluster of interfaces that suddenly popped up before him.

[+2.1 souls]

[+2.4 souls]

[+4.5 souls]

[+6.3 souls]

[+7.1 souls]

The interfaces kept stacking faster than he could read them, it almost felt like a phone he forgot to put on silent.

[+8.4 souls]

[+9.2 souls]

"Okay," Mael said slowly, watching the numbers climb, "okay."

He looked down at the battlefield again, then back at the notifications, then back at the battlefield.

[+10 souls]

[+10 souls]

[+10 souls]

He stared at that last one for a long moment.

Ten per demon.

This meant that each demon down there was worth a hundred souls if he managed to kill one by himself.

Not that he cared to try....after all, he was very much satisfied with both having to do anything and still gaining a reward.

[+10 souls]

[+10 souls]

[+10 souls]

"Hahaha," he let out a laugh as the battle below him enthusiastically continued.

[Souls: 67.4]

[+10 souls]

[+10 souls]

Mael slowly sat down on the cliff edge, legs dangling over the drop, and watched the numbers stack with an expression was one of complete delight.

He hadn’t moved a single muscle, he hadn’t fought anything.

He was sitting on a rock doing absolutely nothing and his soul count was climbing like he’d done something to deserve it.

[Souls: 109.8]

[+10 souls]

[+10 souls]

"Hm," he said was all he could let out in his garbled language.

Because what else did you say when Hell accidentally handed you exactly what you needed while you sat and watched?

[Souls: 143.2]

[+10 souls]

He leaned back on his hands, tilted his head up at the red sky, and let Void Skin do what it was created for.

Though, he still wondered, was the happenings below him some type of war between demon kingdoms or was it just a fight to devour themselves.

Speaking of devour.

He wondered how much stat points he could gain from eating even one of the demons below.

And that’s when the greed rose.

Mael watched with narrowed eyes as he tried coming up with a plan to safely get himself some demon corpse.

The keyword being safely.

He wasn’t stupid enough to jump into the middle of a battlefield of demons that were each worth a hundred souls, especially not at his current stats.

But he didn’t need to go into the middle of it.

He looked along the cliff edge, following it with his eyes until he found what he was looking for, a section where the cliff face wasn’t a sheer drop but a steep slope, close enough to the battlefield’s outer edge that the bodies of demons that had been thrown or knocked back from the fighting were piling up at its base.

Casualties at the fringe.

Far enough from the main chaos that nothing in the thick of it would notice, close enough that the bodies were fresh.

He looked at the nearest corpse at the bottom of the slope then he looked back at the fighting itself, gauging the rhythm of it.

The battle had a current to it, like a river.

The heaviest fighting was concentrated in the center and it was pulling everything inward, the surviving demons too locked into their own survival to pay any attention to what was happening at the edges.

In, grab something, back up the slope before anyone notices.

Simple enough.

Probably.

He started making his way down.

The slope was steep but manageable, his claws finding easy grip in the rock, and he kept low and quiet, moving in the shadow of the cliff face rather than out in the open.

The noise grew as he descended, the crashes and snarls that had been distant from the top were considerably less distant now, close enough that he could feel the heavier impacts through the ground.

He reached the bottom and hid himself against the rock face, waiting to see if he had pulled any attention towards himself.

Nothing was looking at him.

Everything down here was either dead or very busy being the opposite.

He moved fast, crossing the short open stretch to the nearest corpse, a demon twice his size with thick arms and a broad chest that had a gash running across it deep enough to explain how it died very clearly.

Mael grabbed it by the arm and started dragging.

It was heavy.

Considerably heavier than the demons he’d been fighting up in the rocks, which made sense given the soul value, though knowing that didn’t make it any lighter.

He dragged it anyway, back across the open ground, back to the cliff face, keeping his eyes up and his movements steady.

Fortunately for him, he managed to pull it up the cliff again with no one noticing him and he let out a sigh at that.

"Thank you for the meal," he muttered as he sat on the ground and his claws immediately dug into the demon.

The moment its meat reached his mouth, the interface popped up before him again,

[DEVOUR activated.]

[STR +15]

[AGI +20]

[VIT +20]

He’d been scraping plus ones from the small ones up in the rocks and this thing had just casually handed him fifty five stat points like it was spare change.

He resumed chewing considerably more enthusiastically than before.

[HOST STATUS]

[Name: Mael]

[Tier: Lesser Demon — Stage 1]

[Souls: 194.6]

[STATS]

[STR: 30]

[AGI: 35]

[VIT: 35]

[END: 10]

[INT: 14]

The changes were very obvious, and he could immediately feel it. It felt that himself getting closer and closer to something as his strength grew.

What that something was, he had no idea, but as if by instinct, he wanted to grow his strength and immediately get there.

So he continued eating whilst waiting up the cliff, the souls were still coming in and the corpses were piling higher and higher.

With his skills, this was nothing but a large yielding farm.